Editor's Note
Editor’s Note: Saving a ‘piece of New York City’s history’
Publisher Tom Allon and Editor-in-Chief Ralph R. Ortega salvaged old issues of the West Side Spirit, the “official newspaper” of Manhattan’s West Side.
City & State Editor-in-Chief Ralph R. Ortega and Publisher Tom Allon salvaged thousands of copies of the West Side Spirit going back 35 years that were going to lose their home. Ralph R. Ortega
City & State Publisher Tom Allon and I went on a mission Friday to save thousands of printed back issues of the West Side Spirit, a weekly community newspaper Allon ran when he was president and co-owner of Manhattan Media.
More than two dozen bound volume books of these old papers were destined to become homeless as the West Side Spirit’s current owner, Straus News, relocated to a smaller office in midtown Manhattan. “We saved a piece of New York City’s history that was headed for extinction,” Allon said.
“It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history, and we just saved the first draft of New York City’s history from the ’90s, 2000s, and into the 2010s,” Allon told me proudly.
The West Side Spirit and Our Town, another weekly newspaper Allon ran when it was owned by Manhattan Media and which is now also a Straus publication, are the “official newspapers of the West Side and East Side of Manhattan, (respectively),” he explained. “They cover the local news that The New York Times, Daily News, Wall Street Journal, and others neglect.”
One possibility for where the papers could end up is the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards in March tweeted he wanted the archive to take on his many copies of City & State, and that he had “at least 1k magazines……” The archives replied, “We do have series for local publications, would be very happy to discuss a new accession!”